


Truths and Fine Canadian Beverages

by Siria



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23060266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: “We are on a road trip,” David pointed out, “and truth or dare is a classic kind of game to play on a road trip.”
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 38
Kudos: 279





	Truths and Fine Canadian Beverages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheafrotherdon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/gifts).



“No, David, I’m not playing truth or dare with you,” Patrick said. They’d set off an hour later than planned, which meant they were now sitting in rush-hour traffic, and Patrick’s hands were clamped firmly at ten and two on the wheel. David knew what that meant: a Patrick Brewer who was driving with even more caution than usual was a very irritated Patrick Brewer.

“We are on a road trip,” David pointed out, “and truth or dare is a classic kind of game to play on a road trip.”

“I don’t think that we want to be doing anything involving dares when we’re in a car and one of us is driving,” Patrick said. “And when the other person is you, I think that goes double.”

“Slander,” David said lightly, “from the lips of my very own fiancé.”

Patrick sighed, but David could see the corner of his mouth turn up a fraction, and that made him smile in turn.

“Okay,” David said, “let me propose a… compromise. Because I can do that now! I’m a man of compromise.”

“Are you, though?” Patrick asked.

“A _compromise_ ,” David said. “Truths to be told now, dares to be carried out later. Possibly later in bed if they’re”—he shimmied his shoulders a little—“ _sexy_ dares.”

“If I say no, you’re just going to sing Céline Dion until we get out of this traffic, aren’t you?”

“And possibly beyond,” David said, feeling compelled to honesty.

“Okay, fine,” Patrick said. “Truth.”

He’d barely gotten the words out of his mouth before David started off with a classic: “If you could have a superpower, what superpower would it be?”

“Huh,” Patrick said. “Have to admit, totally thought you were going to just start with a sex thing.”

“That? Would be gauche,” David said. “Where do you think I learned how to play truth or dare, _Ohio_?”

“Apologies for my lack of faith in your truth-or-dare foreplay technique,” Patrick said, his voice Sahara-dry.

“Apology accepted,” David said loftily. “And you’re dodging the question.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it much,” Patrick said, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. “Super speed could be fun, get us out of this traffic jam quicker. X-ray vision is a classic, but that would probably get old pretty quick… Actually, you know what, I’m going to go with flying. If it’s good enough for Clark Kent, it’s good enough for me.”

“That’s some of the nerdiest reasoning I’ve ever heard, and yet with some of the potentially sexiest fall-out,” David said. “Could I talk you into wearing the cape?”

“Nope, you asked a question, you got an answer,” Patrick replied. “My turn now.”

“Bossy,” David mumbled, but made a mental note to revisit the cape question later. That hadn’t been a no.

“Okay, um.” There was a pause while Patrick manoeuvred them around a station wagon full of what looked like carpet off-cuts. “Truth or dare.”

“Truth,” David said.

“Hrm,” Patrick said, considering. “Weirdest food you’ve ever had but sort of liked.”

“Weird how?” David said. “Like, weird for me in particular or weird as a food stuff in general?”

“A good lawyer’d be picking all sorts of holes in that logic,” Patrick said, sounding amused.

“Okay, so something that would be considered off-brand for an inconsistently Jewish Canadian who spent a lot of time living in Manhattan and once had sex in a walk-in freezer with a Michelin-starred chef, _or_ something that is generally not a major source of nutrition for a substantial percentage of the world’s population?”

“I think I’m going to go with the second option,” Patrick said, “just because I’m not sure I want to hear about all the ways you've violated health and safety laws.”

“Uh huh, well I kept my hair net on at all times,” David said. “And if you mean the question in the second way, I once subsisted for five days on Ibiza on a diet that consisted entirely of Vodka Red Bulls and communion wafers.” 

“That…” David could see Patrick blink rapidly. “That sounds like a lot of alcohol and not a lot of food.”

“Oh no, we had a couple thousand of them,” David said, waving a hand dismissively. “Like chewing on styrofoam, but perfectly filling if you eat enough.”

“A couple th—David, did you rob a _church_?” 

David hadn’t known that Patrick’s voice could reach that pitch.

“Uh, rude? Antoine and Lola ordered them from Amazon.” David sniffed. “Perfectly legitimate. I mean, Lola’s dad may not have known she was using his credit card, but the baron wasn’t what you’d call the most _hands-on_ parent.”

“This is still leaving me with a lot of questions, but I’m going to start with ‘why’,” Patrick said.

“Well, Antoine wanted to throw a sacrilege-themed foam party, but it fell through because he was going to host it at the place Lindsay Lohan was renting, and you know what _she’s_ like when it comes to reliability.”

“Not personally, no,” Patrick said.

“Anyway, we ended up with a lot of communion wafers and it seemed a shame to waste them, so.” David shrugged. “They're not that bad. I wouldn’t recommend them as a long-term dietary choice or anything. Probably get scurvy, and that’s not attractive.”

“I think five days still counts as a ‘long-term dietary choice’ in this scenario, David,” Patrick said.

David huffed. “Okay, well, whatever, truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Patrick said.

David had been planning to ask whether Patrick had ever had an embarrassing food-related incident, but found himself saying instead, “What were you thinking the first time you met me?”

“Huh,” Patrick said.

“I mean, you don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to,” David said, because he could see a tell-tale flush darkening the tips of Patrick’s ears. The first time his mother had seen Patrick blush, she’d leaned in to David and said, in what she thought of as a whisper, _Your beau is far too etiolated to be let within sight of a poker table, David—such tells! That is a veritable blush and you_ know _that Freud thought of a blush as a mild erection of the head!_

David shuddered at that particular memory.

“I took the challenge, David,” Patrick said. “I’m going to complete the challenge. Just… that’s a big question.”

“It is?” David had been hoping for… well, he didn’t quite know. Some gushing confession of love at first sight, perhaps, or something thrillingly sensual about how David’s complexion had stood out, flawless, amid the lavender-scented cacophony of Ray’s off-brand attempt at a live-work space. He’d been expecting sass. He hadn’t thought of it as a _big question_.

Patrick flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “Well, now I know what I was thinking, because now I’ve got hindsight. But then I… I didn’t even understand what it was. I knew, but I didn’t know. It was too new. Does that make sense?”

“Not _as_ such,” David said tentatively.

“I knew I was going to fall for you the very first time I saw you, David Rose,” Patrick said simply, and David had absolutely no idea what to do with that. He said as much.

“You don’t have to _do_ anything with it,” Patrick said. By now, his ears were a brilliant crimson. “I know it’s nuts—”

“It’s not,” David said, placing a steadying hand on Patrick’s knee for a moment. It hadn’t been like that for him—he’d been wrongfooted by Patrick in a way that had felt oddly pleasurable, but it hadn’t been love at first sight. 

But he thought back to what it had been like to stand in the middle of the store and listen to Patrick sing to him and feel his whole world shift on its axis: from thinking it was something he was incapable of to knowing with bone-deep certainty that he was in love in the space of a few chords, even if he hadn't been able to say the words just yet. “That’s… thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Patrick said stiffly.

There was a moment’s silence before that terrible compulsion to self-sabotaging honesty reared its ugly head again and David said, “I mean, at least a dozen people would agree with you that it’s absolutely nuts to fall for me at any time.”

“David—”

“And one of them has been nominated for multiple Academy Awards and is secretly—don’t tell TMZ—double-jointed.”

“I’m not going anywhere near that,” Patrick said. He cleared his throat. “Truth or dare?”

“Okay, we don’t have to play it any more,” David said. This was absolutely going to fuck things up, when all he’d wanted was distraction and perhaps the promise of a blow job later on. “We can—”

“Oh, are you saying you’re not up to the challenge?” Patrick asked, and David _hated_ when he used that tone of voice. It was hot and absolutely infuriating.

“I didn’t say I—”

“Truth or dare.”

David huffed. “Truth.”

“I would _love_ to hear,” Patrick said, so earnestly that David was instantly suspicious, “about your biggest sporting achievement. Not necessarily your most memorable, because your dad made sure I knew all the gory details of the time you broke your nose going for that three pointer.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” David said.

“I mean, if you don’t want to share, that’s fine,” Patrick said. “You could always forfeit—”

“No, no,” David said, elevating his chin and seeking the kind of airy composure that had served him so well after that infamous Bastille Day party at Rachael Ray’s house. “If you must know, I guess it’s the time I brought down some wild game with a single shot.”

“You… _what_?”

“Just a natural consequence of my innate ability to calculate trajectories,” David said. When you thought about it, were shooting a gun and engaging in trend forecasting really such different skill sets?

“I…” Patrick slowed a little to let a very impatient man in a very overcompensating pick-up truck pass them. “There’s a lot to unpack here, David.”

“Mmm, true,” David said, nodding, “because I’ll have you know I achieved all of that in camouflage coveralls that were not custom-tailored to me. And if there’s one thing that everyone can agree on, it’s that a dropped crotch should only ever be deployed strategically.”

“Yeah,” Patrick said, “pretty sure I’ve seen that quote on inspirational calendars. Tchotchkes. Those cross-stitch kits you can—”

David narrowed his eyes. “Are you making fun of me?”

“Oh, one hundred per cent,” Patrick said.

David wriggled in his seat and grumbled a bit.

“Anyway, your turn,” Patrick said, “unless you want to tell me more about the non-custom-tailored camo.”

“Well, I _could_ ,” David said. “But fine. Truth or dare?”

“Why break a winning streak?” Patrick asked. “Truth.”

“Okay, but this is not like, a competition,” David said. “Just to clarify, you can’t _win_ truth or dare because—”

“David.”

David subsided and chewed on his lower lip, considering. “Last time you didn’t expect to be happy, but then you were.”

Patrick laughed. “Someone’s fishing for compliments.”

“Well, this doesn’t _have_ to be about me,” David said, digging in his bag for a cuticle stick. His right pinkie finger was starting to look a tad unkempt, and that would never do. “I mean, maybe you placed an order at the café and it turned out to be both correct _and_ edible, that would make anyone unexpectedly happy. But if it did turn out to be about me…”

“Now that you mention it,” Patrick said, “when we were getting brunch last Saturday, Twyla did manage to bring me toast that she’d remembered to put in the toaster but also remembered in time to take it out before it burned. I’m going to vote for that.”

“Okay, you can’t win truth or dare?” David pointed out. “But you can absolutely forfeit a round if you’re telling a big ole lie.”

“Maybe that’s my truth,” Patrick said. “Oprah would tell you not to invalidate my truth, David.”

“We are not dragging Oprah into this. Oprah has done nothing to deserve being asked to adjudicate anything related to the culinary offerings of the Café Tropical.”

“Has anyone?” Patrick mumbled.

“Hah!” David said, pointing at him with the cuticle stick. “Tacit admission that your truth is not toast-related.”

“No, of course not,” Patrick said easily. “It was the day you told me you’d marry me.”

David’s heart did something entirely impromptu in his chest, and he had to press his lips together tightly against the noise that wanted to escape. “Okay,” he said, when he’d regained a little composure. “Answers like that are not allowed.”

“You mean the truth?” Patrick asked. “Because I thought this was truth or dare and it’s right there in the name so—”

“Unfair use of the truth to try to win truth or dare when it is not a _game_ to be _won_ but you are”—David sketched a circle in the air with his cuticle stick—“zeroing in on all my weak spots, mister.”

“Mister?” Patrick mouthed, looking amused.

“It’s a perfectly valid word!” David said, setting to his cuticles with a vengeance.

“Just, I love it when you call me _mister_ ,” Patrick said. “Makes me feel all kind of tingl—”

“Stop it,” David said.

“—no, no, definitely next time I’m going down on you—”

“ _Oh_ my god—”

“'Mister!’, you’ll cry out at the height of passion—”

“Just for this, you’re going to pull off at the next exit that’s got a Timmy’s, because I’ll need a lot of caffeine to make it through if you’re going to continue finding yourself hilarious.”

Patrick snickered.

The next exit advertised a Starbucks instead of a Tim Horton’s, and David still had standards, thanks so much; the only time he’d ever willingly uttered the words _grande_ and _venti_ was to compare intimate anecdotes about a certain member of the Belgian royal family with an appropriately scandalised Meredith Vieira.

“Really?” Patrick said. “Not even if I dared you to get Starbucks?”

“No,” David said imperiously. “Only truths and fine Canadian beverages accepted here. Next question.”

“Okay, um…” Patrick clearly cast around for a few moments before deciding on a question. “Uh, what’s the best Mariah Carey concert you’ve ever been to? And you can’t say all of them, that’s a cop out.”

“Madison Square Garden, August 23, 2006, during the second leg of her Adventures of Mimi tour,” David said.

Patrick shot him a glance. “Wow, there was no hesitation there at all. It didn’t suck to choose between the first time you saw her and the time you said ‘I love you’? I’ve seen you take ten minutes to decide whether to organise candles in the store by scent family or by wax composition.”

“Well,” David said, “there’s no competition there, because it was the same concert.”

Patrick frowned. “So the first time you saw Mariah Carey live was when you said you loved her, but none of the times after that? That sounds pretty restrained for you, David.”

David sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. “It was the only time I’ve seen her live, okay? It’s not a big deal, it's really not, so if you could just not make it a big deal that would be great, I would appreciate it, thank you so much.”

There was a pause, and for a moment David thought that Patrick had decided to let it go.

“I mean, you’re kind of making it sound like it _is_ a big deal to you.”

David sighed again, and opened his eyes. No such luck. “Just, there weren’t necessarily a lot of opportunities, so. That’s it, that’s all.”

“You spent most of your life travelling from one major metropolitan area to another whenever you wanted,” Patrick pointed out. “You told me you once went to Shanghai for a weekend because you thought _maybe_ you had a craving for soup dumplings. So I don’t think that’s it. Also, you’re turning red.”

“I am not!” David yelped, but clapped his hands to his cheeks and found they were hot. Practically Sicilian he may have been, but that one Irish grandparent would get you every time.

“Mmmhmm,” Patrick said, with what David thought was an entirely unwarranted degree of scepticism.

“Ugh, fine,” David said. “Just, concerts aren’t that much fun if you go by yourself? Sometimes they’re not even that much fun if you’re with other people, unless it’s like, you and other people and a baggie of this really sensational ketamine that my friend Meadow’s chemist grandma would cook up.”

“Well, everyone knows _that_ ,” Patrick said in a monotone.

David swiped him gently on the knee. “ _Anyway_ , it’s just that no one I hung around with when I lived in Manhattan would have gone to a Mariah Carey concert with me.”

“Really? Not one? Because I’ve heard you describe some of the performance art things they did go to with you—”

“Yeah, but going to see Janet Kempflugen lactate on a painting of the Madonna, or like, Uli X livestreaming himself eating every page of the federal tax code—”

“Wow,” Patrick said.

“—that’s fine. That’s _edgy_." David waved a dismissive hand. "But if I asked people to go see Mariah in concert with me, no one would have understood unless I’d said ‘but like in an ironic way that’s an aware articulation of a camp aesthetic, you know?’”

Which would have sucked, because there was nothing ironic about David’s love for Mariah Carey.

“I get it,” Patrick said quietly.

Patrick sounded sincere, which was weird because David barely got it himself: why it was that no one in Manhattan batted an eyelid if he went out for weekday brunch in Converse and a sequined mini, but wrinkled their nose at the thought of enjoying something that lots of other people liked. It was a conundrum second only to the bigger, but much more pleasant, one of how David had found the love of his life in a place like Schitt’s Creek. There was, suddenly, a very large lump in his throat.

David shifted in his seat, trying to compose himself, and then pointed at the sign for the next exit. “Look, a Timmy’s! Coffee. Patrick, I need coffee, pull off here.”

“Are you trying to say you’d like a coffee, David?” Patrick asked, but steered towards the off-ramp anyway.

“There’s no need for that tone,” David said.

“What tone?” Patrick said, sounding amused.

“That one,” David said. “You know the one, the _tone_.” He didn’t know how to put it into words—he never really did, because whenever he thought about how well Patrick knew him, _understood_ him, it made something turn over in the pit of his stomach, part pleasure and part mortification.

“Uh huh,” Patrick said, and pulled into a free spot in the Tim Horton’s parking lot. He turned off the engine and then leaned over to kiss David on the cheek and then more lingeringly on the mouth. Patrick stayed very close to him, and it took everything David had not to kiss him again, and again, and again. “So I guess there’s only one question left then.”

David sighed. “Truth or dare?”

Patrick shook his head. “Just how _incorrect_ is it to have an earnest moment with someone in a Toyota?”

“Oh, fuck off,” David said.

“A Toyota that your fiancé chose for its safety record and solid depreciation rates.” The smile on Patrick’s face was the one that David could never get enough of: teasing and tender both.

“Well, it is _less_ incorrect when that moment is with your fiancé,” David admitted. Maybe, when it was with your fiancé, the moment was entirely correct—and judging by the look on Patrick’s face, he heard the truth of what David was saying just fine.


End file.
